- AutoLink
An autolink is a hyperlink added automatically to a
hypermedia document, after it has been authored orpublished . Segments of the hypermedia are identified through a process ofpattern matching . For example in hypertext, the software could recognise textual patterns for street addresses, phone numbers,ISBN s, or URLs.In a distributed hypermedia system, such as the
World Wide Web , autolinking can be carried out by client or server software. For example, aweb server could add links to a web page as it sends it to a web browser. A browser can also add links to a page after it has received it from the server.Google Toolbar
AutoLink is a feature of the
Google Toolbar . Users can convert street addresses,ISBN s in a web page in their browser to links by clicking a button on Google Toolbar. The links direct the users to Google Maps for street addresses and Amazon.com for book information.Since introduced in February
2005 , there has been a lot of controversy about this feature. Somewebmaster s expressed their concerns over AutoLink feature claiming that Google had no rights to modify their webpages or to direct the users to a commercial website (i.e. Amazon).This caused
Barnes & Noble , a competitor of Amazon, to link all ISBN's on their site back to themselves to prevent people clicking them to take them to their competitor.[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/03/google_autolink/ Google sceptics] compare it with
Microsoft 's unpopularSmartTag s, which ultimately proved too controversial and were dropped.Trac Wiki Engine
Trac is aweb application for issue tracking in software development. It has a wiki engine which is used for all text and documentation in the system. This includes not only wiki pages but also tickets and check-in log messages. These pieces of text have AutoLinks created, for example the text ticket:1 links to ticket 1. This is an example of server-side AutoLinking.References
# [http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/static.py?page=features.html Google Toolbar Help]
# [http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=482860 Google Answers: Google Toolbar Autolink feature]
# [http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracWiki Trac Wiki Engine]
# [http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracLinks Trac Links]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
